Waymo Expands Driverless Car Service to Las Vegas and Three Other US Cities

Waymo is bringing its driverless cars to Sin City – as well as three other U.S. locations.

Waymo will begin with employee-only driverless rides in Las Vegas before expanding to the public “soon,” though the company did not announce an exact launch date in a Wednesday news release.

Las Vegas riders will be among the first to experience Waymo’s newest vehicle, Ojai, which the company calls “an oasis on wheels,” designed with added comfort features. It will join Zoox and Motional in offering driverless rides in the Las Vegas area.

The other three cities that can also catch a Waymo are San Diego, Tampa and Denver, the company said Wednesday.

As Waymo continues to expand its fleet, the company hasn’t been without its problems.

A Waymo car in San Francisco hit a dog last December, just weeks after a beloved neighborhood cat was killed by one of the robotaxis.

In January, a Waymo car in Santa Monica, California, hit a child near an elementary school after they ran across the street from behind a double-parking SUV.

Also in January, a local news outlet in Austin, KXAN, reported that Waymo cars were illegally passing school buses as students crossed the street, even after the company updated its software to fix the issue.

But Waymo insists its robotaxis are still safer than cars operated by human drivers.

"Our vehicles have 12x fewer crashes involving injuries to pedestrians compared to human benchmarks,” a Waymo spokesperson previously told The Independent.

Waymo also announced it has started testing its 6th-generation autonomous driving system in Hyundai IONIQ 5 vehicles, marking another step toward expanding its fully driverless fleet.

Waymo currently operates 24/7 fully autonomous robotaxi services across 10 U.S. metro areas, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Atlanta and Austin.